Natrona County School District sets Dual Language Immersion meeting
An informational meeting on the proposed Dual Language Immersion program is scheduled for 7 p.m. Thursday in the Jefferson Room at the Nartona County School District’s Central Services Facility, 970 N. Glenn Road.
Dual Language Immersion allows children to learn a foreign language during their regular classes. Children are taught half of the day in English and the other half in Mandarin Chinese or Spanish. The program would be optional for NCSD students. If approved, a pilot program for kindergarten students would begin this fall.
NCSD officials are determining the level of interest from parents and from schools interested in offering the program. The meeting is intended to help introduce the idea to parents, district officials said.
The author’s daughter as she prepares to march in the Starr King Elementary School Chinese New Year Parade contingent on Feb. 23, 3013. Photo by Kristin Belshaw.
By Carmen Cordovez
SAN FRANCISCO — As my daughter and I wait for our school’s drum and dance troupe to begin marching at the Lunar New Year parade, I’m amazed I’m here at all. While growing up in Quito I would have never dreamed of marching in this parade. Today I am a native Spanish speaker from Ecuador, married to an American from New England, and we live in San Francisco with our two children, ages 10 and 6. Who go to a Mandarin immersion school.
It was important to me for my kids to speak Spanish and to be acquainted with my culture. Therefore I only spoke Spanish with them beginning when they were babies. Each year I take them to Ecuador for two months in the summer. Their experience visiting and interacting with the Latin side of their family wouldn’t have been the same if they didn’t speak Spanish.
With so many Spanish immersion public schools in San Francisco, some of my friends wondered by we didn’t chose one of them. But because our children were already fluent in Spanish when it was time for them to start elementary school, and because my husband had studied Asian history and was interested in exposing them to a third language and culture, we decided to send them to a Mandarin immersion program instead.
Initially, I had reservations about sending my kids to a Chinese language program (either Mandarin or Cantonese). I was afraid I would not be able to help them with their homework or participate in school activities. I was also afraid that Asian instructors’ ways of teaching would be too strict and less creative.
Despite to my initial skepticism, I’ve been able to participate fully in my children’s school activities, in both English and Mandarin. I’ve gone on field trips to Chinatown, cooked Chinese noodles for festivals, helped organize the Lunar New Year Parade and more. In terms of Mandarin homework, though I have used a tutor at times I have discovered helping my children is more an issue of offering them the tools and space to work rather than instructing. Assisting children in learning to write Chinese characters is more about patterns and stroke order (clearly conveyed in the homework) or using a dictionary, than in understanding the meaning of the words.
At least for the first five years, being in Mandarin immersion has been an experience that has expanded my son and daughter’s world and creativity. During the initial years when the Chinese was simpler and they only wrote single characters in school, they would write the word from a depiction of its meaning, much like drawing the object. My daughter loved learning to write the characters with brush and black ink in a blank piece of paper.
Later they learned different words to call each object. For them, everything in the world has three names, one in English, one in Spanish and now one in Chinese. They have expanded their understanding to the concept that things can be seen from different perspectives. Now my son and daughter love to find words in Chinese that come from the meaning of other words: For example, the see words they know in other contexts in their Chinese names—her meaning happy and big, his big and serene.
Since I have exposed them as much as possible to my Latin culture and my husband as much as possible to his American one, it has been amazing to have been able to expose them to a third culture. Their babysitter (who is from Central America) had not been exposed so much to Chinese culture and it has been really interesting to observe how my daughter’s been able to correct our sitter’s prejudices which stem from that lack of exposure.
I do have to admit though that as my daughter gets older (she is in fourth grade now) the constant memorization of hundreds of written Chinese characters becomes tedious. But something must be working well because she continues to be as happy and creative today as she was in the play-based preschool she loved years ago.
I was also concerned I would not be able to connect personally with the Asian-American parents at our school as well as I thought I might have in a Spanish immersion school. I have to say I have been pleasantly surprised. As a lot of the Asian American parents come from bicultural, and in many cases bilingual, families they are open to the idiosyncrasies that I bring as a foreigner and so have been open to who I am more than non-bicultural families might have been.
In regards to maintaining my own culture and language with the kids, I just have to make the extra effort to keep exposing them to it, speaking to them only in Spanish and travelling to Spanish-speaking countries as often as possible.
But for now, while we are in San Francisco, we shall enjoy our march in the Lunar New Year Parade.
Here’s an interesting opinion piece from the former mayor of San Mateo, Calif. about College Park Elementary, which is home to a Mandarin immersion program with students in Kindergarten through 3rd grade and which will fill to 5th grade in two years, eventually filling the school.
OP-ED: Does North Central neighborhood need a school?
Back in the ‘70s, San Mateo’s North Central neighborhood had two neighborhood schools, Lawrence Elementary and Turnbull Middle School. Both schools were eventually shut but not because of poor performance. Lawrence was located between 3rd and 4th avenues east of the railroad tracks. The neighborhood was becoming increasingly commercial and traffic heavy. The school was deemed vulnerable in an earthquake and in any major flooding from Crystal Springs Dam. Turnbull middle school was one of the best. But it was shut because enrollment was shrinking and the school district, after Proposition 13, couldn’t afford to keep all existing schools open.
During these years, the North Central neighborhood was primarily black. In the late ‘60s, the board decided to integrate the schools in a one way busing strategy. North Central students would be bused out of the area to other schools in the district. This was the right thing to do at the time. Students bused out of their home neighborhood might receive a better education and all students would benefit from integrating the schools. When Lawrence closed, the number of students bused to other schools in the district increased. It was often difficult for these students. A group of parents asked for their neighborhood school back. If that wasn’t possible they wanted a significant number of their students going to any one school. Otherwise their children felt isolated. By the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, some educators were beginning to question whether busing minority children to other schools improved their academic performance if a quality education could be provided in their neighborhood.
Payton students videoconferencing with peers in Morocco while Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and several Ambassadors to the United States look on. (U.S. Chief of Protocol)
Traveling internationally is not “foreign” to Walter Payton College Preparatory Academy students. In the past decade, the school faculty worked hard to make sure that in order to live up to the school motto—“We Nurture Leaders”— it includes a global vision of leadership. We’ve asked former school principal Ellen Estrada to share with our readers how her school community did it. -The Editors
by Ellen Estrada
After September 11, 2001, the leadership of Walter Payton Preparatory High School chose to reach out to the world through the use of modern technology and student exchanges. Knowing the implications of an interconnected world for their students, the school decided that the world would become Payton’s classroom.
Payton’s motto, “We Nurture Leaders,” recognizes the critical need for students to understand and connect to the world, and to develop cultural competencies and multiple perspectives on issues and events. In the video-conferencing lab and with email and video projects, students linked to young people around the world to share knowledge, ideas and to form friendships and build relationships.
Traveling internationally became integral to the experience of Payton students and teachers. During the past several years, students have visited sister schools and educational institutions in 21 cities on five continents. This article examines how the exchange programs are set-up and how we find funding for them.
How Schools Can Successfully Partner with Local Businesses
Businesses have a vested interest in their communities. They need a strong pool of local workers to choose from and consumers who can afford their products. Many businesses want to give to the community and invest in it, but sometimes they aren’t sure where to start. Schools can also benefit from these partnerships, providing students with opportunities for success in the workforce.
Charlie Katz, Director of Corporate Engagement at the National Academy Foundation (NAF), a network of 500 academies serving over 60,000 students across the United States, says that business partnerships can address the new Three R’s: rigor, relevance, and relationships.
A lack of relevance is a key reason why so many students today drop out of school, especially in urban areas where many of the NAF academies are located. However, by building strong partnerships with over 2,500 businesses across the country, NAF has seen their graduation rate soar to 97%.
Katz recommends engaging business partners for many roles: guest speakers, job shadowing, student conferences, mentorships, and internships. These types of activities can make learning more relevant by providing real-world examples.
For instance, Katz once sat in on a high school accounting class with a teacher who was good, but very dry. When he was invited to speak, he illustrated the same lesson with his real-life example of calculating inventory for Ford Mustangs. The class perked up when they realized the relevance of the lesson to a good, interesting job.
For several hours each day, students at Waddell Language Academy speak and write only in Chinese.
Nearly all their subjects, including math and science, have been taught in Mandarin since they were in kindergarten. They’ll likely graduate high school fluent without the slightest accent.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools began its Chinese immersion program in 2006 with just one kindergarten class of only 21 students. Now, there are nearly 250 students in grades kindergarten through sixth.
“We have an unfortunately long waiting list of students who will not have the opportunity to start this program in kindergarten, because demand exceeds our capacity,” principal Ynez Olshausen said.
Fifth graders Amina Shafeek-Horton and Milan Carter said they enjoy learning Chinese and speak it to each other outside of school.
Waddell is the only school in CMS that offers the Chinese immersion program, which will continue to expand through grade 12.
Pearson, one of the nation’s largest textbook publishers, has translated its enVisionMATH program that into Chinese. From the company:
“enVisionMATH is an amazing elementary Math program written specifically to address the Common Core State Standards, and is based on critical foundational research and proven classroom results. We have customized that program to be translated into Chinese for dual immersion schools. As of right now, we have fully translated grades Kindergarten, 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade of the K-6 program and translated the table of contents. Grades 4-6 are currently being translated.
This program does include a digital path. The digital path includes the full English enVision Math digital path with the Chinese translated ebook and a folder for teachers which includes all of the translated reteach and practice worksheets for each grade.
The background for this project is that in 2011, Pearson began discussions in Utah to translate its math program, as Utah wanted to use enVisionMATH in their classrooms, says Pearson’s Lindsey Pietrowski. Utah has the largest network of Mandarin immersion elementary schools in the country.
“We proceeded to sell this program to dual immersion schools in the state of Utah and worked with Chinese language specialist, Sandy Talbot, to translate into the simplified Chinese character set,” says Pietrowski. “We did leave certain portions of the program in English that the dual immersion students may need to take home, such as Common Core Bullets and other parent information.”
If your school is interested in viewing or ordering, they can work with their local Pearson Account Executive. If you don’t have one, please contact
Mandarin Immersion Parents Council 